Coraline

Article written by Neesha Thunga K

B.A. in English Literature, and M.A. in English Language and Literature.

Published in 2002, Coraline is a popular dark fantasy children’s novella written by Neil Gaiman. The book has received appreciation from readers of all ages and was awarded the Hugo Award for Best Novella in 2003. Coraline also received the 2002 Bram Stoker Award for Best Work for Young Readers and the 2003 Nebula Award for Best Novella. The novella is one of Neil Gaiman’s most celebrated works and it has been adapted for film by Henry Selick in 2009.

Key Facts about Coraline

• Title: Coraline
• Published: July 2, 2002
• Genre: Children’s literature, fantasy horror, fairy tale, horror fiction
• Point-of-View: Third-person limited
• Setting: A big apartment in England
• Climax: The tussle between Coraline and the Other Mother
• Antagonist: The Other Mother

Neil Gaiman and Coraline

It was a story, I learned when people began to read it, that children experienced as an adventure, but which gave adults nightmares. It’s the strangest book I’ve written, it took the longest time to write, and it’s the book I’m proudest of.

Coraline started as a children’s book that Neil Gaiman wanted to write for his daughter Holly. He began writing the story in 1990 when his daughter was just 5 years old. He had a vision in mind; he wished for the story to have a female heroine and to be “refreshingly creepy.”

Gaiman put a stop to the story once he moved to America and other projects took over. After a while, he picked up Coraline once again when his younger daughter, Maddy, turned 5 – the same age as Holly was when he first began writing the book. Gaiman approached his editor at HarperCollins with the first part of his book and was given a contract.

After this, Gaiman continued to work on Coraline whenever he got the chance to. He made special progress on the book when he got stuck on one of his other novels, American Gods, which gave him uninterrupted time to focus on Coraline. Gaiman finally finished the novella a decade later when it was published in 2002.

Gaiman has commented that the name “Coraline” originated from a typo. He meant for the titular character’s name to be “Caroline” but made a mistake and decided to stick with it. He said,

Larry Niven, the science fiction author, said in an essay that writers should treasure their typing mistakes. Once I typed it, I knew it was somebody’s name, and I wanted to know what happened to her.

Some aspects of the novella are inspired by Gaiman’s own life. For instance, when he was a little boy, Gaiman was raised in a big house with a door that opened onto a brick wall. He used to imagine that one day, he would open the door and the brick wall would vanish, leaving behind a corridor.

Coraline’s disgust of “recipes” is also drawn from Gaiman’s own life. His son, Mike, would never touch any of Gaiman’s adventurous “recipes,” and would eat out of the refrigerator instead.

Gaiman read the novella to his daughter, Maddy, who was 6 years old when the book was completed. He gave the novella to his older daughter Holly, who was 16 when she read it. Holly Gaiman apparently commented that one can never be too old for Coraline – a statement that attests to Coraline’s large fan base of all ages.

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The Lasting Impact of Coraline